This research investigates the articulation, negotiation, and institutional framing of peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan during the post-conflict period. The analysis is centered on four primary corpora: speeches from the UN General Assembly, mediation documents from the OSCE and EU, bilateral and trilateral diplomatic communications, and significant treaties or draft agreements. Employing a systematic Thematic Content Analysis (TCA), the study identifies eight recurring themes; sovereignty, connectivity, peace agenda, security, humanitarian issues, mediation, memory, and reconstruction and explores their evolution across diplomatic contexts over time. The findings indicate that post-conflict discourse in the South Caucasus is characterized by dynamism rather than stable, displaying shifts in emphasis that reflect broader geopolitical transformations. Although sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security continue to be foundational principles, the data reveal a notable increase in themes related to connectivity and treaties between 2023 and 2025, indicating a transition from emergency stabilization towards institutional normalization. In contrast to prevailing scholarly perspectives that highlight identity, trauma, and competing notions of victimhood as primary explanatory factors in the conflict, formal diplomatic texts across all corpora predominantly exclude memory-centric narratives, favoring instead a technocratic, forward-looking discourse focused on borders, infrastructure, and regional cooperation. The study also uncovers significant variances across different diplomatic platforms: UNGA speeches emphasize global legitimacy, OSCE/EU documents highlight mediation frameworks, bilateral discussions concentrate on practical negotiations, and treaties formalize emerging agreements. These results underscore the necessity of conceptualizing peace as a complex, discursive process rather than a singular event, influenced by evolving regional and international dynamics. The study concludes by addressing limitations concerning data scope and proposing future research directions, including the examination of domestic political discourse, public sentiment, and civil-society perspectives to better understand the interplay between elite narratives and societal perceptions of peace.
Hakan Ömer Tunca (Thu,) studied this question.